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3D Food Printer Funded by NASA

NASA just gave Anjan Contractor a $125,000 grant to help fund his 3D food printer. They hope the printer can be used on missions to space, but Anjan also sees potential to end world hunger. The powder used to “print” this food, lasts up to 30 years which is more then enough to work for NASA’s goal of food for space exploration. Their first goal will be to print pizza (of course).

The system uses the basic ingredients of food in powder form it can then be mixed with water, oil or other powders and come out the nozzles on the other end. Pizza is a pretty good first choice since it is layer based and does not require mixing with other powders. First the pizza printer will lay down a dough base which can be cooked while being printed by a heated plate below it. Then a tomato paste layer is laid down by mixing the powder with water and oil. Finally a protein later is put on which can be from animals, milk or plants. Yummy?

I am not sure I would like a future where you go online to a website to order a pizza and it comes out of your printer…

Here is a video of the prototype that was created to print a simple chocolate layer.